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Practice of the Wild from MOUNTAIN EQUIPMENT on Vimeo . Above is the film of me climbing Practice of the Wild 8C in Switzerland the other week. The whole experience of that trip went pretty well. I had a good focus, good training and ended up doing not just the big goal, but almost everything else on my wishlist as well. I normally make pretty ambitious wish lists for trips and so if I manage even one of them I’m doing well. So I came home quite inspired to try and repeat the process. However, your focus has to fall into line with what the conditions of the moment dictate. I wanted to climb one more boulder problem project back in Scotland, before the summer heat arrived. With many things to catch up on since I arrived home, I only got two chances to get on it. Last week I went up in not great conditions and almost did it. Yesterday I had another chance but couldn’t get away till late in the evening. My plan was to drive up, walk in and have a night session on it with the lights. Bu...

Risk taking is something that continually fascinates me. It used to occupy my mind mainly in the context of running it out on scary trad routes. These days, more and more, I think of my risk taking in this environment as being quite simple most of the time. I either want to do the climb enough and feel able and willing to commit to it, or I don’t. Risk taking decisions in climbing are often quite formulaic. You put the pieces of information you have through the algorithm, and then churn out the decision. The spaces between the information get filled with intuition borne from experience (of past mistakes). Where you know you are relying on intuition, you must accept its limitations and be ready to escape as best you can if the adventure goes bad. If there is no intuition, no spaces between the data, there isn’t much excitement. Sport becomes robotic and dull. More interesting are the more complex risks of life. Where the proportion of fragments of useful signal in the noise of unknowns ...

Video still of climbing Practice of the Wild (Font 8C) in Magic Wood last week. The footage of Tyler Landman doing the second ascent of Practice of the Wild was what first inspired me to visit Magic Wood in 2012. Obviously I’d already heard about it, as ‘Chris Sharma’s hardest boulder problem’. I’d heard about Chris’s method for the last move - a wild all points off dyno across the roof. Landman looked so dynamic and strong on it and the climbing looked so good. It it was an exemplary piece of hard climbing. I had to go there. But not for Practice of the Wild - at Font 8c and one the hardest problems in the world according to Daniel Woods who also repeated it, it was too hard for me. Although I do boulder for quite a few months in the year, sometimes as much as 6, I’ve never got much beyond a handful of Font 8Bs. On my 2012 visit, feeling in good shape for me, I did manage two 8B+s ( New Base Line and Mystic Stylez ) which I was very surprised and delighted with. Of course bouldering...

Shallow Water to Riverbed 8B+ from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo . Right now I am back in Magic Wood, Switzerland, waiting for the rain and snow to stop. I’ve been here for a week, with a mix of great climbing sessions and the usual wet days. I’m always full of anticipation and excitement for any climbing trip. But this one maybe that bit more than ever as I felt some signs that I feel in maybe the best climbing shape I have been. In some ways I find this amazing since I worked ~16 hour days more or less non-stop between last October and the Fort William Mountain Festival in February. Some of this work included training and climbing. But the point is, I had a heavy workload with a lot or pressure on my ability to rest and thus sustain a training schedule. I have adapted some good strategies to squeeze maximum benefit from less resting time that I would like. So what about the training? The minor factor in this has been a solid uninterrupted period of training through the winter on my board ...

Ben Nevis · Wild Times from Nevis Landscape Partnership on Vimeo . I’m delighted to finally be able to share this film that I’ve been gathering footage for since last summer. The Nevis Landscape Partnership asked us to make a series of films for them related to the Ben Nevis/Glen Nevis area over a few years. Last year we focused on the huge survey of the Ben Nevis north face. This year I wanted to focus more on Glen Nevis, and great people who are connected to it, both in the past and today. One place that I have always found one of the most special places on the earth is Steall in upper Glen Nevis. In the film I featured a little of the history of the folk who lived there, just a couple of generations ago.  One of the things I find fascinating is the idea of the similarities and differences between the people of the past who lived and worked in these places, and those who use it today. Often, today people are using the mountains for sport, although many are also lucky enough to...

The Curtain - Solo from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo . Here is a wee video shot on my GoPro of my solo of The Curtain on Ben Nevis the other week. I was up in the north face to do something else but because of conditions eded up going for a wee solo. I’d never done the Curtain and wanted to solo it for ages but never got round to it.

Gimme That Swing 8B, Glen Nevis from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo . Returning home from Mull I could see the incredible spell of weather was about to break. I dived out to my project on The Cameron Stone in Glen Nevis, which I was very close to completing before I left. It was starting to rain as I got there and the top rapidly got soaked. The project is super crimpy and I’ve split my fingertips on it twice already. Basically, you only get a handful of tries at the crux match and jump before it splits. On each try, you gamble with ‘one more try’ until your finger splits and you lose two days training. The project starts up Dan Varian’s problem up the arete, completed last spring at 8A+ and repeated by me last September. I could see there was an obvious harder link to go leftwards on the tiny crimps and jump to the good block on the neighbouring 7C+ ‘The news in Pidgin Gaelic’. I’m never too sure about the grade, especially with super crimpy lines, but if the arete is 8A+ then it’s got to b...